Interview with Craig Turvey (Create-a-Snorlax Card Contest)
Interview with Craig Turvey (Create-a-Snorlax Card Contest)
We were delighted to interview Craig Turvey, the artist behind Wizard of the Coast's 49th promo card, and we reveal some exciting discoveries about the event!
Between February 10th and March 21st 2002, Wizards of the Coast held a contest where Pokémon League participants could create a Snorlax card and submit it for consideration. The winning entry would be produced as an official Pokémon promo card and given out to all Pokémon TCG League participants in its eighth season. From around April 8th 2002, twenty entries were randomly selected and added to the Wizards of the Coast website, where web users could vote on their favourite card, based on specific criteria, such as originality, creativity, overall presentation and drawing ability. The winner of that contest was Craig Turvey, who we are delighted to be interviewing here on Johto Times!
Thanks for joining us for this interview, Craig! I want to begin by asking you to tell us about yourself.
Craig:
I'm married with a 13-year old son and 10-year old daughter. I work as a SQL Developer/Programmer for the past 11 years. I've lived in Colorado all my life except for a year I spent teaching English in Taipei, Taiwan.
How did you first get interested in Pokémon?
Craig:
I first saw Pokémon at the 1997 E3 in Atlanta, Georgia and remember thinking to myself that it was 'too cute', that it's okay for Japan but would never take off in the States. I didn't actually get into collecting/playing until one of my college friends pulled me in.
You were part of a local Pokémon TCG League. How did you come to join it?
Craig:
I worked at Hastings in Greeley, and they were looking for someone to host a weekly Pokémon league. As I'd played for years, I volunteered. At one point we were simultaneously running Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Harry Potter leagues and they had to get another volunteer to assist me.
When did you learn about the Create-a-Snorlax Card Contest?
Craig:
I learned about the Create-A-Snorlax [contest] as I was passing out the entry forms for my league, and [I] decided I should enter as well.
How did you come up with the idea for your Snorlax design?
Craig:
My original idea was a large, simple 'Z' in the background with a Snorlax asleep in front.
In addition to Snorlax, you included a sleeping Eevee alongside it. What made you decide to include this Pokémon?
Craig:
I later decided to add the Eevee for the cuteness factor, I figured they'd probably sleep more like a cat than a dog.
Did you have any other ideas for Snorlax before settling on the final design?
Craig:
Nope, I kinda sketched it out as I went and stayed with my original side view of Snorlax.
In total, from coming up with the concept to completing and submitting the final design, how long did it take you to create your artwork?
Craig:
I did it in one night, sketching out the Z first with a ruler, then adding the Snorlax/Eevee, and finally the stars. Pencil for the sketch, colored pencils for all other color, and black magic marker to make the back as dark as possible (I actually had a black mark on my table for years where the marker had bled through).
Your entry was one of twenty entries picked by Wizards of the Coast. What were your thoughts on the other pieces of art selected for the contest?
Craig:
I never thought that I'd win. I was sure that the Sumo Snorlax was going to be the winner.
How did you discover that you had won the contest?
Craig:
At E3 in Los Angeles, they hadn't announced the winner yet and they had a booth there. So I went and asked who had won. They made a call and said 'Craig Turvey' had won.
What was your reaction like at the time?
Craig:
When they said 'Craig Turvey' won, I just pointed at my E3 badge with my name. There was some hand shaking and some publicity photos taken, I'm not sure if they ever used them or not.
How did winning the contest impact you as part of your league group?
Craig:
Ever since then, I've told my League attendees that if they're able to find a copy of that promo card, they can bring it in and I'll sign it for them. I've traded a couple signed cards for cards I needed for my collection in the past, and did a recent limited set of signed/sketched/PSA-authenticated cards (90-ish) for the die-hard collectors out there. These are the only cards I've ever sketched. That said, 99% of the signed cards you see 'in the wild' are probably from League attendees.
Did the contest inspire you to keep making art as you got older?
Craig:
It didn't. I've never really considered myself that artistic, and my skills haven't really gotten any better since then. I work SQL/C#, pretty much the opposite of art!
In recent years, around the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, Pokémon trading cards saw a sharp increase in value and demand, with your Snorlax promo card in particular becoming one of the most valuable. What is your opinion on the current state of the trading card game?
Craig:
I think it's incredible how much Pokémon cards have gone up in value. I have a complete 1st edition set of all WotC sets, and mostly complete sets after that (most sets missing a handful of reverse-holo cards). I'm kind of split on how to feel about the interest in Pokémon. It's great because my collection will go to my kids and be worth a lot to them. It's also a shame as resellers buy stores out of stock to the point where it's hard to find newer sets.
What was your relationship with Pokémon in the years that followed?
Craig:
I still run a Pokémon League at Digital Dungeon every Saturday 2pm-5pm, though 2020 has all but killed out attendance from the numbers it used to be.
Thank you for taking the time to speak to us and sharing your memories of the Create-a-Snorlax Card Contest, Craig! Do you have any final words you would like to share with our readers?
Craig:
I still have a couple sealed packs of the Snorlax that WotC gave me as a prize. I've been thinking of doing a numbered signed/sketched/PSA-authenticated with the words 'Memento Mori' written on the card. If I do this, I plan on locking them in a safe to never be released until I pass away. At that point, my family could sell them as needed to cover any bills... kind of an unorthodox life-insurance plan. A bit macabre, but I think it would make for a cool collector's item!
During our research, I was able to locate all twenty of the randomly selected entries for the Create-a-Snorlax Card Contest that were originally voted on, which includes Craig’s entry. I have been able to confirm their authenticity by one of the other finalists, SailorClef. I asked her about her entry, and how the public voting was carried out.
I don't think my entry was great but I also did it with colored pencils from the dollar store the night before it was 'due'. One of the other ones I remember that was actually decent and I thought was a contender to win was with 2 Snorlax sumo wrestling. You could vote once per day, I thought, because I remembered posting and begging that people go vote for mine on my site. I was like 15? I literally cried when I saw mine on the list.
The voting from what I remember was more like rating, it wasn't "should this one win" it was like rate it from 1 to 5. The voting page would always have issues loading all of the [entries] further down, but the one that won was at the very top
SailorClef
I also spoke to Khym Villacrusis (also known as Gym Leader Khym), who ran a Pokémon TCG League in 2002 and participated in the Create-a-Snorlax Pokémon Card Contest, along with his brother Bryan and his now wife, but didn’t qualify as finalists. He told me that inside one of the monthly league kits, there were materials for the Snorlax Create-a-Card Contest for League members. It came with an oversized blank Pokémon card frame to use for submissions. He handed them out to other members of the League, and a handful of them showed interest.
Khym expressed how interested he was in drawing, but until this point only his family had seen his creations. At the time, he thought to himself how amazing it would be to have an actual Pokémon card with his name on it, and so he entered the contest along with his brother and his friend at the time. He wasn't sure what the judges would be looking for in an entry, so he just focused on what would make sense for Snorlax. Kyhm drew Snorlax using an Earthquake attack, because he thought it would be cool if the card art portrayed the listed card attack. He also made one of Snorlax sleeping and one of him eating. The final card he drew was in the spirit of the Imakuni? cards, with a Snorlax strategising over his hand playing the actual Pokémon TCG, breaking the fourth wall.
Kyhm's wife submitted a Snorlax holding a parasol under a sakura tree, and his brother submitted some art of Snorlax taking a swim. Since each art piece had to be mailed in to Wizards of the Coast, photographs of the art were taken with a digital camera. Khym didn't hear anything about the contest until league kits arrived with Craig Turvey's winning card as the league promo.
Kyhm was able to send over all six of the art pieces that he still has, but unfortunately the Snorlax with the parasol was only a thumbnail. I was able to locate the sixth image through my research.
Finally, we would like to share five pieces of art that appeared on the Wizards of the Coast website that were used to promote the contest. We believe these were created internally and exclusively for promotional materials, as evidenced by one of them appearing on the entry form, and none were among the twenty finalists.
A full collection of the twenty finalists artwork can be seen below
Thanks to Craig for sharing his memories of the Wizards of the Coast Create-a-Snorlax Card Contest, and to SailorClef and Khym Villacrusis for sharing their words with us.
Interviews conducted on October 24th 2023 (Craig), October 26th (SailorClef), October 29th 2023 (Khym)
Interview published on November 16th 2023